Today is Election Day in SD06

It’s highly unlikely that this will settle anything, but today is Election Day in SD06. If you live in SD06 and have waited till today to cast your ballot, you can find your polling place here or here. I’ve already done my spiel about turnout and finance reports, so let’s see what the media has to say. Here’s the Texas Trib:

Alvarado and Garcia have campaigned at breakneck speeds after Perry officially announced Saturday’s election date on Dec. 13. The ensuing weeks have seen several candidate forums and fundraisers.

The most recent campaign finance filing period ended Jan. 18, with Garcia reporting about $164,000 raised since Jan. 1, expenditures of $300,000 and about $228,400 remaining in her war chest. A pre-election telegram report, which is filed to report contributions received after the date of the last report, shows Garcia raised an additional $14,500.

Alvarado raised about $185,000 during the same time period, spent about $315,000 and has about $110,000 left on hand. She also raised about $20,000 after the filing date, according to her telegram reports on file with the Texas Ethics Commission.

The Houston Chronicle reported Wednesday that plaintiff’s attorney and Democratic donor Steve Mostyn provided a bulk of Garcia’s support. Mostyn has donated more than $200,000 to Garcia throughout the course of the campaign, including about $187,000 in in-kind contributions from Mostyn’s Texas Organizing Project PAC.

The publication also noted that Alvarado received $22,000 from the Houston Police Officers Union and a $15,000 donation from HillCo lobbyists in Austin.

[…]

Garcia also hit Alvarado after the representative touted an endorsement from Stand for Children, an education advocacy group that Garcia said supports school vouchers.

“Sylvia Garcia strongly believes in fully funding our public schools, not using those dollars to help wealthy private schools take money away from our children,” Guerra said in a statement.

Hitting back, Alvarado said she has always supported public education and is on the side of educators and school districts.

“I am a product of HISD,” she said. “If there is any doubt on where I stand on public education, look at my voting record. I am the only one in this race with a record.”

“This paper begins with an overview of existing choice programs and a discussion of the current evidence available on these policies and their impact on student outcomes and equity,” the researchers write.

Calls to Stand for Children seeking clarification on where the group stands on the issue of vouchers were not immediately returned.

“School choice” means different things to different people, but I have zero doubt that Alvarado would oppose vouchers. There’s nothing in her record or her rhetoric to suggest otherwise. It would be nice to get some clarity from Stand For Children on this, but this will not keep me awake at night.

Alvarado said she was focusing on the issues the district’s voters care about: education, the economy and jobs, health care.

“We’re knocking on doors, phone-calling and keeping on message,” she said. “I’m happy we haven’t lowered ourselves into the gutter the way our opponent has.”

Garcia rejected the negative-campaigning charge. “Any time you compare a record – and that’s all we’re doing – your opponent will say you’re going negative. We’ll just have to let the voters decide.”

Whatever you think about the race so far, any real nastiness will come out in the runoff. That’s just how the world works.

[Dorothy] Olmos, who ran an unsuccessful campaign for the State Board of Education in 2010, said she is working her ground game, as well.

“We’re knocking on doors and beating the bushes,” she said.

Olmos, a former teacher and hair salon operator, noted that she received 80,000 votes in the general election for the State Board of Education, 35,000 from Senate District 6.

Dream big, Dorothy. RW Bray got 38,201 votes in SD06 in November, and that’s about twice as many votes as will be cast in total for this race. As a point of comparison, Lawrence Allen, the incumbent Democrat in SBOE 4 that Olmos opposed in 2012, got over 77,000 votes in SD06. And just to fully beat this into submission, by my count there were 27,556 straight ticket Republican votes cast in SD06. This means that nearly 80% of Dorothy Olmos’ vote total in SD06 came from straight ticket voters, of which there will be none today, and that just under 7,500 people made the deliberate and conscious choice of voting for Dorothy Olmos last November. Of course, if she were to match that vote total in this election, she’d be a near lock for the runoff, but I feel pretty confident saying that ain’t gonna happen. I’ll have a brief post about who does make the runoff tonight and a fuller one tomorrow morning.